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Struggles Over the Shore: building the quay of Izmir, 1867–1875
Author(s) -
ZandiSayek Sibel
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
city and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1548-744X
pISSN - 0893-0465
DOI - 10.1525/city.2000.12.1.55
Subject(s) - elite , modernization theory , shore , context (archaeology) , economy , urban planning , political science , urban history , urbanism , history , architecture , civil engineering , economic history , archaeology , engineering , law , politics , economics , oceanography , geology
BEGINNING IN THE MID‐NINETEENTH CENTURY, the urban landscape of the Ottoman seaport of Izmir, like other centers on the eastern Mediterranean, was profoundly transformed by the advent of modern forms of urban institutions and infrastructure. Studies dealing with these transformations have been so immersed in structural processes of European economic penetration that little has been known on the ways in which local actors participated in these changes and reworked them to address their own urban concerns and ambitions. Focusing on the remaking of the quay in Izmir, this essay explores how the project triggered discursive and practical struggles among Ottoman administrators, shore owners, local merchants, and a progressive elite, by transforming land tenure patterns and modes of handling trade and shipping on the shore. In doing so, it demonstrates how existing power relations and the complexity of the local urban context reshaped'and gave meaning to this urban modernization scheme. [Modernization, urban elite, public interest, Izmir, Turkey]